


Louche

by linguamortua



Series: Cadet Hux & Sarwen Niral [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Age Difference, Armitage Hux Has Issues, Cadet Hux, Drunk Sex, M/M, Military Backstory, Sugar Daddy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 19:33:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8297741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua
Summary: Hux is thrilled when his patron and protector, General Sarwen Niral, suggests a weekend away. However, while Hux pictured a romantic getaway, it seems that Niral has other plans and classified priorities. Irritated by his lover's clandestine diplomatic meetings, and made suspicious by Niral's silence on the matter, Hux uses his budding skills in manipulation and seduction to turn the tide in his favour.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is, friends - the sequel to _Parvenu_. Apologies for the delay - it's been through two major changes in plot and I started a new job, besides. Let me remind you all that the original concept for this series comes from the divine, the illustrious, the ingenious [irisparry](http://irisparry.tumblr.com).

SN: _Tell me you don’t have some dreadful exam or drill this weekend, Hux. I have a wicked mind to steal you away for a night or two._

AH: _I’ve an astrogeometry mock on the seventh, but I can skip it._

SN: _Don’t get into a scrape on my account — I’ll have a word with old Verrick and tell him I need you desperately for, oh, special detachment. You can be my aide-de-camp, on the record._

AH: _And off the record?_

SN: _I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise._

AH: _Reporting for duty._

SN: _I’ll send a speeder to the Academy, say, 1700? Don't bother to pack. I’ll make all the arrangements._

 

* * *

 

Sunlight spilled into the room, bright and fresh and bringing with it the promise of a long, lazy, luxurious day. It hardly seemed real, at first. Hux lay very still for a few minutes, his eyes cracked open the barest degree. Only yesterday morning he had been hunched over his datapad in the sparse, cold Academy dormitory, and today—

A bird trilled outside; the gentle breeze brought the sound in and Hux reached out to part the filmy curtains around the bed to look out onto the serene forests of Aurora VII. The trees moved like a sea, green and grey and blue. It had been an age since he’d seen barely-tamed nature, seen anything but the Academy or the cutting urban edge of Coruscant’s megacities.

Hux was alone in the bed, but it was not cause for complaint. As he started to move, feet and hands and neck, gently stretching, he became aware of lingering fatigue. Not from the flight, an easy few hours in a fast shuttle across the system, but from the endless drills and schooling and extra assignments that the best Academy students were expected to endure for months at a time. From classroom to battle sim to parade ground to their thin, cold beds, stopping only for a hardly adequate ration of bad food three times a day. Suffering was character-building, and Hux had many times thought to himself that by now he must have enough character to take to the stage professionally, and damn his father’s opinions about actors.

He felt delicious and hazy from sleep, now, the privations of military life all but chased away by one blissful night of rest. The sheets were satiny on his bare skin; he had slipped under the covers naked from the shower the previous night, some tiny, limbic part of his brain perhaps hoping for a nocturnal visit from Niral. Instead, Niral had ushered Hux with his usual urbane manner to the room adjoining his own, and entreated him to rest up. Hux wriggled for a moment in boyish delight, his memory of the previous evening unfolding as he came properly awake. The secluded boutique hotel. The tiered bathing pools fed by hot streams. The tantalising light repast laid out in his room; the thick robes in the bathroom. The promise of utter luxury for nearly two whole days, and the intoxicating attentions of Sarwen Niral - and all quite out of nowhere, an unexpected treat for no apparent reason but Niral’s own pleasure.

And Hux’s, perhaps, although that would naturally be secondary; Hux had no illusions as to his relative importance in the grander scheme of things.

He rolled onto his belly and yawned enormously, loudly, enjoying the noise and the freedom and feeling childlike and unfettered. At the Academy, one was seen and not heard by one’s superiors. One did not sleep in until - Hux waved his hand over the chrono to activate it - until 10 00. As he thought maliciously of what his fellow cadets would be doing at this hour, Hux’s stomach remembered that it was rather overdue for breakfast, growling so loudly that the insistent bird outside the window was briefly silenced. He slid to the side of the bed, gathering up the crisp white top sheet as he went. It rustled along the floor behind him like some bizarre wedding gown, making a tall, lean ghost of him as he drifted across the large room. Sparing only the briefest glance for the view, Hux turned himself in a circle in the centre of the floor, his toes sinking into the carpet.

The damnable, confusing thing was that Hux had no idea of the etiquette of luxury establishments. Presumably if one had to ask, one outed oneself as utterly at sea, and yet Hux was eager enough for his breakfast that he finally quelled his worry and moved over to the comm panel. It was tastefully concealed behind a little wooden hatch, marked only by a small gold communicator symbol. As he reached for it, the unlocked connecting door to Niral’s room clicked softly.

Hux turned. Niral stepped into the room, casual in loose, pale trousers and a light shirt. His feet were bare.

‘Good morning,’ said Niral, raising his eyebrows and observing Hux’s draped form with clear interest. Hux flushed, for he was not so far from the bed and it might be imagined by someone with a sufficiently salacious mind that he had contrived to be caught like this, nude under the fine, thin, pale bedsheet.

‘Hello,’ he said softly in return, his voice muted and intimate in the quiet room. It made him sound younger, and shy, and something about that vulnerability made his hands fist in the sheet and wrap it more snugly around his chest. Too late he realised he was compounding the issue, drawing modesty around himself like a blushing virgin. Niral smiled and came across the floor with deceptive casualness.

‘How did you sleep?’

 _Alone,_ Hux wanted to say, but he backed off in his uncertainty and said, instead, ‘well, thank you,’ as if he were a guest in Niral’s home. He said it rather meekly.

‘I fancy you look a trifle pale, dear boy,’ Niral said, brushing his knuckles down Hux’s cheek, ‘but I suppose you’re tired, still, what with all the interminable _marching_.’ He said the last with a melodramatic shudder, speaking volumes about his own Academy experience decades ago, and Hux could not contain his own smile. ‘I have some small errands to attend to - such a bore, I can’t even tell you - but you can find a bite of breakfast and then take a turn around the gardens, if that suits?’

‘I was about to,’ began Hux, gesturing anxiously towards the comm panel with an unveiled helplessness that Niral responded to in fine, dashing style.

‘Oh, allow me,’ he said, and then he switched over to the elegant, rapid-fire argot of the planet and ordered Hux breakfast. Hux understood only about three in ten words, but he had no time to be ashamed of his ignorance for Niral came to him then and ran a finger along the top of the sheet so that Hux had to drop it.

‘The window,’ Hux said; Niral only laughed in his smoky, deep way and turned Hux by the shoulders to look at him from all angles. Until now, Niral had seen only parts of Hux in their brief meetings. There were whole unmapped areas of Hux’s body, some of which, like his xylophone rib cage or knobbly kneecaps, he would have preferred to be exposed only in darkness. Niral seemed not to notice or care, because he made an approving noise, then, and kissed Hux under the edge of his jaw, and then drew back.

‘Breakfast,’ he said again, ‘and find yourself something from the wardrobe. Then go and get some sun, for heaven’s sake - everyone will think I’ve had you locked away in some ghastly tower for a hundred years.’

 _Everyone?_ Hux mouthed to himself as Niral departed, wondering if he had been brought here for some special reason. To be displayed. He rescued his sheet from the floor.

In the wardrobe hung a selection of items that provided no particular clues but gave Hux plenty of cause for blush. He immediately pushed aside the swimwear, glossy and tiny, quite unlike regulation bathing suits. Slender as he was, he was not entirely sure that the shorts would cover enough of him for modesty.

Soft, loose shirts in several colours. Voluminous, straight-legged trousers, floating and asymmetric capes in the Bespin style and a plethora of wide, light scarves. Or at least, Hux thought they were scarves. Certainly this was no manner of dress that he had ever seen or worn, but he suspected that establishments of this calibre did not make mistakes when asked to provide a selection of informal attire. Hux chewed his lip, quite at sea. Time was pressing; although many of the hotel’s patrons no doubt received breakfast clad in only their bedsheets, Hux was not eager to be counted among them. He tucked one corner of the sheet under his arm to hold it, and rifled through the clothes.

The least billowing options available would have to do; a pair of trousers the colour of milky caf and a white sleeveless shirt not unlike his undergarments at home. It had the benefit of being opaque. He hurried the clothes on, trying not to enjoy the smooth, luxurious fabrics too much. It would all be over soon - he couldn’t become accustomed. It would never do to expect this kind of life.

As he fastened his trousers in a neat bow, a discreet knock on the door heralded his long-awaited breakfast. He opened the door for a trio of starched and ironed women, who swept in with a trolley and began unloading numerous dishes onto a side table. Every dish and plate was placed in a large, spiralling pattern not unlike an unfurling flower. Pressed napkins burst forth here and there in leafy folds. The women moved around each other with stately yet efficient grace, in a wonderfully choreographed show of hospitality, and then they departed with polite murmurs.

He ate too much, of course. It was quite impossible not to. Indeed, every time Hux was blessed with the products of Niral’s good taste and money he had no way of stopping himself from overindulging. At the Academy, three square, plain meals a day were considered as much as any young cadet could require; and, on holidays, a small, stodgy pudding with thick custard was an appropriate treat. Hux’s father’s opinions had been much the same, and so the help were instructed to present wholesome, simple fare, with none of that _Corellian rubbish_.

In Niral’s rarified world, the food was so different as to frequently be unrecognisable to Hux. Breakfast, at this hotel, was a panoply of small and colourful dishes, each containing a delectable few mouthfuls of delicately-concocted food. Fruits which Hux knew only from holopedias as a child, thin curls of a lightly-spiced fish, sweetmeats and airy little breads and cakes. Sauces of several colours and consistencies which Hux could not have paired with the dishes with a blaster to his head; he tried them all indiscriminately, dipping his fingers into the bowls and licking them clean. By the time he finished, the beautifully-arranged dishes were haphazardly scattered across the table, and he had spilled some red sauce on the tablecloth. A few stones and garnishes were all that was left.

Only the rigours of Academy life and the needs of his growing body stopped him from being quite sick afterwards. He was habituated to being rather ill-used and knocked about - he had, at this precise moment, a vicious bruise over one hip and a shoulder joint that ached and clicked alarmingly when he stretched. It was how officers were made. It was certainly how his father had been made. He wondered, not for the first time, how Niral had managed to remain so — so — not _soft_ , for the general had been seasoned in battle. No, never soft. Resilient, perhaps, still upright and unscarred and seemingly wholly free of the wear and tear that military life inevitably effected on the body. Polished.

Still wondering, Hux picked up a sprig of something astringent and refreshing and chewed it idly as he drifted over to the window again. Now that he was properly fed, the pleasure gardens looked an enticing prospect all spread out in the sun. He left his room carrying nothing on him; he had brought nothing with him to the planet, trusting entirely to Niral to provide.

 

* * *

 

Hux wandered through the gardens with an aimlessness that was so rare in his life as to be slightly unnerving. The planet’s flora had been tamed with the very lightest of touches. No imperial topiary here, nor rigidly-formed walking gardens - the plants and trees had been permitted to grow in a lazy tangle, controlled enough to give guests an unhindered walking experience, but thick enough to screen them from prying eyes.

Away to the south stretched a low series of hills, rolling away into the distance. They were visible through certain parts of the gardens, little hideaways and nooks which appeared around corners as if by magic, but were in fact contrived to provide the most picturesque of vistas. Stone benches were placed at convenient locations. Here and there nestled tiny gardens ringed with high bushes and accessible through discreet gates.

Passing servants slipped past Hux with such well-practiced discretion that one might almost not notice them. It was quite probable that anyone more accustomed to such luxurious surroundings would indeed ignore them. Primed to salute practically anybody who wasn’t a cadet, Hux was made very uncomfortable by the whole situation; besides, as his mother would no doubt tell him, the measure of a man was how he treated the staff. It seemed common to tactfully ignore them, here, but Hux could not make himself do it, and instead settled into a pattern of staring at his feet so as not to accidentally make eye contact. Still, it was hard to let the worry weigh on him. Soon, the Academy stiffness in his neck and back began to recede. He no longer moved in crisp, marching steps (to do otherwise in school was often met with extra drill practice). His face and hands softened into civilian ease.

Drifting past an elegant piece of mirror statuary, Hux chanced a glimpse of himself out of the corner of his eye. Draped in the pale, unstructured leisure clothes of the planet and caught unawares, he looked like some soft, pampered thing, floating through the gardens like a thin ghost. A relic of a bygone time, untouched by the current, menacing backdrop of galactic tension. He hurriedly looked around to see if anyone was there to notice him startling at his own reflection, and saw himself in the distorted mirror image again - flighty, nervous, anticipating capture. Bare-armed and pale. Perhaps, thought Hux, this was what Niral saw in him. Perhaps it was the appeal of taking Hux places that made him faintly uncomfortable, and then watching him flutter like a trapped butterfly. It would make Niral almost cruel, but Hux could imagine that very easily and, to his faint surprise, was not concerned by the thought.

Hux had not put his chrono on his wrist that morning. Maybe two hours had passed; two hours of gentle strolling and soaking up the elegant gardens, the soft bird calls, two hours of intense aesthetic pleasure the likes of which Hux had hardly known before now. He realised that he had traced a large circle around the grounds and was now gradually approaching the long stone steps sweeping down from the hotel, down which he had walked earlier that morning.

Amidst the sparse scattering of guests strolling through the grounds and along the balustraded walkways around the hotel, one figure drew Hux’s eye. Niral. His posture was unmistakeable to Hux now. He came down the steps with his easy, feline lope, spotting Hux immediately and effortlessly navigating through a tiny ornamental maze to come to him. That was almost a shame; it was rare that Hux ever had the opportunity to observe Niral unnoticed, the way the man always seemed to be able to look at Hux. Hux craved the chance to catch a real glimpse of the man to whom he had tied himself and, perhaps, his fortunes.

As Niral raised his hand to Hux in greeting, yet a little far away to call out, a cloud passed over the sun and Hux suppressed a melodramatic thought.

‘Are you feeling rested?’ Niral enquired immediately he came within speaking distance, preempting anything Hux should want to say.

‘Yes, thank you.’ Hux was rather surprised to find that it was true. Perhaps it was what was meant when people talked about the resilience of youth; yesterday he had been done in, but a full night’s sleep and a real breakfast had done him a world of good.

‘There’s a boating lake at the bottom of the hill,’ said Niral. ‘We could take a row around the water before lunch. Unless you could eat now, of course — I know how you young fellows get.’

Hux had seen the lake, silvery and surreal in the middle distance like a strange mirage among the trees. Water was carefully conserved through a myriad of technologies on Corellia, and more so on its moons. He had not seen a lake in a long time — not since he was a child. The boating lake here was a luxury, and one scarcely used, it seemed. Only a few tiny boats were dotted across its mirrored expanse. It was not a hard decision.

‘Let’s go to the lake.’ Niral looked pleased and held out his arm in an anachronistic expression of gentility. When Hux took it he began to blush, to be touching Niral in public for the first time.

Down at the lake, a small coterie of elegantly dressed folk strolled around the manicured paths in the pleasant shade of the trees. Niral looked perfectly at home there, although his simple attire was at odds with some of the more vibrant peacockery on display; Hux thought him rather like a chameleon, able to blend into social situations with no apparent effort or artifice. They secured a boat and, Hux found, Niral could also row without any apparent effort, rolling up his cuffs neatly and swinging them out from the dock with an easy arm. There was only one place to sit and Niral, of course, took it, sparing a quick glance for his chrono as he did so. The seat was little more than a plank. After a second’s hesitation Hux tucked himself down into the bow and leaned his chin on his folded arms so that he could look down into the clear water as Niral took them smoothly around in a wide arc. A few darting fish flitted through the water, but aside from them it was perfectly empty. It was possible to see all the way down to the little white pebbles of the lakebed.

As Niral rowed with long, easy strokes, energy preserved with good technique, Hux trailed a lazy hand through the water. It was gently warmed by the sun, just enough to take the chill off. Interactions with nature were, for Hux, generally accompanied by the less-than-dulcet shouting of a sergeant and usually involved mud, hills and trees. Lounging in a boat on a lake was unsurprisingly not part of the core curriculum for up-and-coming young officers. He closed his eyes and basked a little in the sort of sun that one rarely saw outside of holovids.

Had he ever been on holiday? He tried to remember. A childhood on Arkanis, rainy, miserable, provincial. Some trips to nearby military centres for General Hux's business; Corellia, once, for his mother's family. Hux had been very young — recalled almost nothing. Duty had driven his father, and still did, and now compelled Hux, resigned him to a life of service. Service that presently seemed a long, long way away. Hux half-drowsed, half-thought, soothed by the sound of the oars in the water.

It was not clear what happened, exactly, but suddenly he felt the world lurch around him and when he opened his eyes he found, most unnervingly, that he was upside down and in mid air. The water was much colder when he landed in it than his earlier assessment had suggested, and he yelled out a great shout as the impact punched the air from his lungs. He could swim, of course; it was required, and yet he was more accustomed to lengths of a pool so it took him some moments to right himself. The light, voluminous cloth of his strange outfit proved tiresome when under water, so that by the time he resurfaced Niral’s boat was some yards away.

Hux reoriented himself and swam over with long, overarm pulls, ready to be quite indignant, but Niral’s face as he reached a hand down to tug Hux aboard was apologetic.

‘My dear Hux,’ he said, ‘I’m terribly sorry. A great inconvenient fool ploughed his boat into ours and tipped us, and you were quite over before I could warn you to hang on.’

An uncharacteristic rush of words from Niral— a heavy descent into the bottom of the boat. A few moments where all Hux could do was lie there and reorient himself, and then the sky and water resolving themselves into focus again, fresh and bright, and the sounds of rowing and high, drawling society voices echoing across the lake. Hux reeled.

Under his left hand something leaflike crunched and Hux reached for it. A small piece of flimsi, white and smooth and half rolled into a loose cylinder; a rare sight, anachronistic and surreal to Hux. He pushed himself up on his elbow, water trickling from his hair down his forehead, and took a closer look at the flimsi. Niral took his wrist.

‘What a thing to do, dear boy, grubbing around down there.’ He took the curl of flimsi, gave it a disdainful look and dropped it into the water with careless disregard. It opened and blurred and sank, translucent and coming apart with the gentle lapping waves moving it about. ‘I suppose that ghastly fellow in the boat dropped it.’

‘It might have been important,’ Hux protested, but very weakly, and felt a little ashamed for his boyish curiosity although he knew it sometimes pleased Niral. Somewhere in his brain a thought was slowly forming about the manner of speech he had become accustomed to of late — assessing everything he said to please, or at the very least not to displease, was not a particularly savoury habit to be in. It was anathema for an officer to defer on those grounds, and if Hux was not an officer yet, he was very strenuously attempting to become one. He rather liked to go about privately pretending that he had his rank already, for it had a very stiffening effect on his spine and it would not to do be unprepared when the day came. It was even somewhat encouraged for the Academy boys to adopt certain mannerisms - never with the tutors, of course, unless one liked running extra laps - and he supposed that wherever the girls were, they had their own rules, too. Niral’s very presence disrupted Hux's personal code of behaviour. He wished that he had unrolled the flimsi. It might have —

‘Hux,’ Niral said sharply, and Hux realized with a start that he had been woolgathering the past minute, and snapped back to himself with an impolite questioning sound of the kind his parents did not allow at the dinner table. Niral bared his teeth. ‘Oh, never mind.’ A pause; someone yelled out across the lake and another voice called back, laughing. ‘You look a little chilled.’ As quick as anything Niral was back to his usual urbanity and he shipped his oar in the rowlock and lowered himself carefully down to lie beside Hux. Hux observed, intrigued, the way his muscles rippled as he came down to Hux’s level; and then, better, the warmth of his body radiating over to his own chilly skin.

‘Nobody can see us down here,’ said Hux, turning his head and looking at Niral hopefully.

‘How convenient.’ Niral’s answering grin lasted but a moment before he moved, rolled to plant one hand one the boards of the boat and swung his hip over so he was straddling Hux. It turned out that cold water had very little effect on Hux’s customary physical reaction to Niral’s proximity, and, shamefully quickly, Hux was hard with no way of finessing the situation. Indeed, his filmy, fawn trousers left little to the imagination; the dark pink contours of his cockhead pressed them into a tent at which Niral gazed with interest. Niral lifted a hand — Hux’s were pressed flat against the bottom of the boat by his hips for want of a better option — and ran a firm thumb over Hux’s nipples. ‘Look,’ said Niral, gesturing with a nod of his head, and Hux followed his eyes. His creamy white shirt was practically transparent and his nipples showed through, peaked and eager, like those on the girls in the dirty holos the other boys passed around.

Hux swallowed.

‘Have you ever — in a boat — have you?’ he tried, inarticulate, for his body was pumping his blood directly away from his brain, and the sentence sounded more and more inappropriate with every word he managed to get out.

‘Have I ever fucked anyone in a boat?’ Niral asked casually, still brushing at Hux’s left nipple and idly watching him squirm.

‘Yes?’

‘Oh, I suppose so. Not in a boat this size; damned hard to keep from capsizing, I’d imagine.’

‘Oh.’ Niral had not yet fucked him; Hux was obscurely hoping that he could invite it or engineer it somehow, if he just kept Niral talking.

‘You’ve already been overboard once today. ’ Niral looked at him for a moment and shifted his weight so that Hux’s cock brushed once, teasingly, against Niral’s own crotch. Hux’s breath caught and his hips tried to arch for more.

The thin tie on Hux’s trousers surrendered immediately to Niral’s questing fingers, and soon Niral’s bare hand was on Hux’s cock. Hux let out a high sound that carried alarmingly over the water and Niral laughed.

‘Any more noises like that and everybody will think you’re getting fucked anyway,’ he said, with undisguised amusement.

‘Everybody,’ Hux repeated into his forearm, which he was using to hide himself from Niral’s knowing gaze. He trailed off as Niral’s squeezed him a little tighter, saying something, something that Hux should probably attend to. Niral’s touch chased away rational thought at the best of times but this, this was a treat, something unusual, unreciprocated pleasure for Hux. He shuddered under Niral, the man’s legs warm and hard and bracketing him in. It was going to end too soon, Hux knew, his body tensing and bucking and his hands scrabbling against the boat in his desperation. He gasped once, twice, stuttering breaths in and out, and then he came with a noise that he stifled against his arm, eyes scrunching closed and his entire consciousness focused on nothing more than fucking up into Niral’s hand, over and over and over.

 

* * *

 

A gentle warmth running through Hux, after the lake’s unpleasant chill — the sky above him as he lay in the boat with his eyes closed — Niral whistling a refrain as he rowed them back to shore. Up out of the boat, along the path and up, up to the hotel, the sun drying Hux’s thin layers before they reached the door. Then the intimate quiet of a semi-private dining room, where Hux sat by the window and stared out over the grounds while Niral ordered their lunch. They sat in a pleasant silence, Niral doctoring Hux’s meal with the correct condiments and sauces and then watching him eat with quiet appreciation; he had always liked to treat Hux with good food.

‘I’m going to borrow you for the evening, if I may,’ said Niral over the second course, eventually breaking the silence. It was a quite unnecessary piece of politesse; Hux considered his constant availability an essential hallmark of their association to date. A prerequisite, even — he doubted very much that Niral would be interested in chasing him.

‘All right,’ Hux said, carefully manoeuvering some kind of fish spread onto a wafer. Then, belatedly with his mouth full, ‘what for?’

‘An event — a cultural thing. Gala. An awful bore, mostly likely.’ Niral smiled, turning upon Hux that charm, that force of will, that felt all but irresistible. Yet, Hux tried to resist, just to see if he could.

‘If it’s going to be boring, why do you want to go?’ He paused, took a quick breath. ‘We could stay in your room instead.’ Hux looked through his eyelashes and felt his body melt into an appealing posture. He wondered when exactly he had learned to flirt and flounce to make older men want to fuck him. When exactly he had ceased to feel ashamed of that sort of behaviour. It pleased Niral, of that he was certain — the man flashed a grin and stretched an arm over the back of his chair so that he could learn back and appraise Hux.

‘I’d like nothing more,’ Niral said as sincerely as he ever said anything, ‘but unfortunately I’m being compelled to attend. Orders from above, and so forth.’

Hux nodded mechanically; one did not quibble over orders. He had never heard of an officer being sent to a luxury planet to socialise at cultural events, nor had he any idea how Niral could second him as an aide without censure when Hux was doing absolutely nothing but being dressed, fed, and fondled in boats. If he was called upon to make a report on his activities here, he would have to speak as close to the truth as possible: his duties were very light, he had not been briefed about the purpose of the trip and assumed it to be above his clearance level, he begged that his superiors consult General Niral’s report for a more complete accounting of the days in question. It would never do to point out that he had no idea why he had been brought. He could not very well answer too truthfully — _well, sirs, the General seemed to disappear off an awful lot, and insisted that we take a turn around the lake in a boat, except I ended up in the water, and also I spent a lot of time eating, but that’s about the shape of it, and permission to be dismissed before I incriminate myself_?

A suspicious mind would be able to generate any number of unsavoury hypotheses; but to whom those hypotheses would be reported to, Hux had no notion at all.

Indeed, with lunch finished, Niral once again begged Hux’s indulgence and said he had an afternoon appointment; he had kept looking at his watch as if running late, more concerned now about his schedule than ever he had been back on Corellia. Hux had had a faint hope of something terribly romantic in the afternoon — what, precisely, he had no clue — but Niral only pulled him into a quiet alcove and mauled him about a little, leaving Hux flushed and hopelessly turned on, and then handed him over to a set of young women in the hotel’s lavish bathing suites.

‘Now, ladies,’ Niral said, petting idly at Hux, ‘I’m taking him out tonight, so kindly scrub him and have him ready by six to change. I leave him in your good hands. Be gentle — he is an innocent, you know.’ That last was said with innuendo to make the girls laugh; as far as they were concerned Hux was bought and paid for, in the usual way of young men accompanied by older. They treated him like a wayward younger brother, gently teasing, sweetly complimentary of his pale skin and red hair. With an appalling lack of embarrassment they undressed him and poured him into a bath so hot he was quite faint from the steam, and let him soak there like a steamed fish until time grew elastic. In a room with a heated tile table they flitted around him, massaging him into a stupor and telling him off for the state of his feet which were, for reasons he did not understand, apparently in an unacceptable state.

At length he was so calm that the intrusion of fluttering female hands into his most intimate areas seemed quite unremarkable; balms and unguents were applied, various cleaning tools wielded and, when Hux finally emerged from their flower-scented sanctuary, he felt like a human sacrifice, cleaned and purified for some arcane ritual. There was not a hair left on him from the neck down, and the clean clothes the women had put on him were distressingly soft on his skin.

‘Aren’t you pink?’ Niral asked him, rhetorically, as he opened the door to his suite at Hux’s tentative knocking. ‘Come in, do — I’ve an outfit ready for you. Did you enjoy the baths?’

There was no need to answer that, and Hux was hardly capable of forming a reply, languid as he was. Niral was dressed for the evening already and smelled like old brandy and herbal soap. He navigated Hux across the room to the sizeable wardrobe, which was easily bigger than Hux’s small corner of Dormitory Eight back at the Academy.

‘Here, this is yours.’ Niral pulled out a suit and hung it, displaying it against the cream and gold wallpaper. A tunic and trousers, with an undershirt thinner and finer than any Hux had seen, let alone put on his body.

‘Oh,’ Hux said, his voice breathier than he would have liked. He reached out a careful hand and brushed his fingers along the teal sleeve. It was tightly woven, with the subtle gloss of shimmersilk, and edged with a tasteful gold trim. Hux had had moderately expensive suits in his twenty years - two in his wardrobe at all times, for respectable family occasions. Once a year, he went with his father to the family tailor, to be fitted for the next in a long line of staid banthawool suits, in black or dark grey as the events demanded. Dinners, funerals, weddings, receptions and diplomatic occasions; a Hux appeared only in the most classic style, with a plain pocket square and whatever honours he had earned. Respectability was the primary goal of a Hux, with military dress tactically deployed only at military functions. To wear it for family occasions was, Brendol Hux declared, just a type of showing off.

Niral’s goals were so obviously and shockingly different that Hux could not contain his blush. You didn’t wear shimmersilk unless you were _fast_ — women might wear it, but in a male wardrobe it was for playboys and kept men and indiscreet holo stars.

‘I considered pink,’ said Niral, touching the underside of Hux’s chin to bring his face up. ‘Or perhaps bronze.’

‘That would have been,’ Hux said, hunting for a word, ‘a lot.’

‘Mm, quite.’ Niral’s datapad beeped softly from his pocket and he flicked it open to read with a frown. Hux waited as he composed a short reply, and then he put away the datapad and his face morphed back into a smile, with uncanny smoothness. ‘Well, do take your clothes off, Hux, we don’t want to be late.’ The casual order was brutally effective; Niral hardly had to speak and Hux was in motion. He pulled the jacket off the hanger with a whisper and touched the filmy shirt beneath with something approaching reverence. It had no collar, and a gently suggestive v-shaped opening before the first button.

Niral helped him into the suit; Hux began to protest but then a seam moved to show a wealth of tiny, pearlescent buttons and, defeated, he meekly accepted the aid. As always Niral’s hands were warm and deft. They spidered up his back, buttoning Hux into his outfit, which fit so smoothly and snugly that it could only have been intended for him. Hux’s reflection in the mirror was shocking to him — he hovered somewhere between arrogant young aristocrat and kept boy, both of which were, of course, somewhere close to the mark. The silk whispered when he moved and brushed his skin at neck and wrists, with a luxury that he had never before been permitted to enjoy. Niral appraised him in the mirror, turned him, even walked around him, his gaze hungry.

‘Superb, Hux,’ he said. ‘I shall have to keep you by me so that you don't contrive to get stolen.’ He turned and tidied his own outfit in the mirror. Niral himself was oddly dressed down tonight, his suit exceptionally well-cut and sleek but unremarkable in style and a rather plain gunmetal grey. A flash of a white shirt at his throat set his amber skin off to perfection, and his shoes were black mirrors; still, Hux had seen a thousand wealthy men dress with the same careful restraint, and only Niral’s good looks and easy manner stood out.

‘Where are we going?’ Hux finally asked.

‘There’s a trade delegation here from one of those amphibious planets in the Sartar system. They’re a parochial lot so Aurora VII was chosen to impress them. Overkill, I call it. Still, they’re in possession of some rather important metals for blaster manufacture, and High Command wanted a presence for— well, it’s terribly boring, my dear— anyhow, I have to dart off every so often and press the flesh. Tonight they’re throwing a reception and a dance, and we must show up and pretend that it’s not going to be a ghastly, tacky affair.’

‘Oh,’ said Hux dismally, Niral’s fleeting presence throughout the days making more sense. Daydreaming about Niral taking him away was spoiled by the knowledge that Niral was here to work.

‘Now then,’ said Niral, taking Hux by the chin and pausing to kiss him soundly. ‘They keep me horribly busy, so I must fit in my recreation where I can. Shall we?’ He made a minor alteration to Hux’s attire and then shepherded him towards the door.

Hux had no time to complain further, or to even consider complaint. Niral led him through corridors that he had not yet seen, through to the large wing on the western side of the hotel and then down a wide, sweeping staircase into a busy atrium. Lights hung down like stars and the space was filled with a cornucopia of lush, vibrant colours; dresses and robes and suits and headdresses, hung over and around skin and hair and scales and tentacles of every colour imaginable. He had expected the stilted formality of receptions on Corellia, more expensive than events on Arkanis but always rather stuffy and scripted. This was something else entirely; exuberant, daring, held in a location known for providing a sensual setting to one’s private functions.

Indeed, the wait staff were barely clad and a bevy of sinuous dancers of all genders made tableaus and formations that would have been risqué on Corellia and utterly inappropriate back home. What kind of diplomatic detachment would be greeted this way? Certainly none on any of the Core worlds. Hux imagined his father's reaction with vicious satisfaction.

‘Should I do anything?’ Hux asked, trying not to stare at the undulating hips on display. ‘Or not do anything?’

‘Do whatever pleases you,’ said Niral. ‘Nobody here will know the difference.’ He spoke with a sort of heavy, unpleasant amusement, condescending — Hux wondered if his plain suit was simply a measure of his boredom at being required to attend. They processed down the wide staircase, Niral’s hand on the small of his back, and Hux was gratified to see that no few people turned their heads to watch. They found a quiet area and Niral accosted a server to furnish them with drinks, tall glasses of champagne, which Hux had never had, and which Niral tossed back with ease.

Despite his easy charm, Niral was irritated to be there; Hux could see it in the way his gaze was flat, disinterested in the proceedings, and in the tension in his fingers as he clasped his glass of champagne. It was the fashion here, it seemed, to stroll around the edge of the room and show off one’s outfit; they processed a little, paused to exchange pleasantries, watched the dancers a little. Hux might have liked to dance, or perhaps to peruse the buffet, which was very elegant and smelled delicious, but Niral kept him nearby, steering him with a peremptory hand.

At the north end of the ballroom was a stately cluster of green-skinned xenos, tentacled and damp-skinned.

‘The delegation,’ Niral murmured as they approached. ‘Titled _your excellencies_. Just make a pleasantry and move on; I shall probably have to stay a moment to exchange the proper formalities.’

An introduction; Hux gave a bow, proffered a hand and had it clasped damply in return — a pleasant climate, your excellencies, such a splendid evening — honour to meet, and so forth. Then they lost interest in him, turning to Niral with a familiarity that informed Hux that Niral’s many meetings had been with the delegation. Hux drifted away, annoyed to be dismissed so like a child. He pouted, but nobody noticed, of course, so he went to sit in an empty window seat and watch the fireflies flit around the darkened gardens outside with his feet rudely pulled up onto the cushions.

‘Don’t _you_ look a picture?’

Hux looked away from the window to see a woman appraising him, statuesque in blue shimmersilk and easily Niral’s age. She was human, and beautiful, in a hawkish sort of a way, and her gaze was penetrating. Although plump where Niral was slender, and laced firmly into a dress of formidable superstructure, they had a similarly predatory approach, a way of tilted their head and looking amused at Hux’s expense.

Despite himself, Hux was interested. ( _You don’t like women, Armitage._ ) He smiled over his shoulder.

‘Do I?’

‘Garene.’ The woman extended a beringed hand and Hux received it in his own.

‘H-- Armitage.’

‘Who are you here with, Armitage?’

‘Nobody,’ Hux lied, with a wide and deliberate smile, knowing he could not possibly be believed. ‘Will you sit?’

‘I will.’ Garene lowered herself onto the cushions next to him, just close enough to be exciting without touching; a clever trick, but one that Hux had already seen deployed. ‘Now, wicked boy, don’t tell me that you’re just lying around, waiting to be picked up.’

‘I’m here on— on business,’ said Hux. He took a sip from his glass, head light. Garene touched her own drink to her lips with handsome elegance. She inquired about the gardens, the lake, the rooms; and had Armitage been here before? And how did he like the planet? And where was home, and what was it like? Hux had some notion of making light conversation back, somehow, but the wine was going to his head and she was all persistence; he could not have managed to stem her flow even were he able to concoct a question or two back and, presently, he realised that she was more interested in watching and listening while he answered than in the answers themselves. _Niral likes to watch me eat, and she likes to watch me speak,_ Hux reflected to himself.

He smiled prettily, experimentally; she leaned in a little, said something that was obscured by a sudden peal of laughter from behind Hux somewhere. Over Garene’s shoulder, he could see Niral making a symbolic kind of gesture with his long, precise hands, and the diplomats mirrored it. Hux sat up a little straighter, hopeful, suddenly, and Garene casually shifted on the cushioned window seat and looked around the room as if scanned it idly in a lull. She caught the direction of Hux’s gaze, took note and stood, so that by the time Niral came back she was making her goodbyes.

‘It was my pleasure, Armitage,’ she said, and slipped a tiny card into the fold of his shirt cuff with the sleight of hand of a magician. Her perfume smelled like lilies; her insinuation was undeniable. Hux warmed to think about it; how easy it had been to be flirtatious, to lie in a fashion that suggested availability. How many men and women would respond to him? _How easily I've been trained_ , he thought, and tucked the thought away for later.

‘Armitage?’ Niral asked quietly into Hux’s ear as Garene swept away. He caught Hux by the elbow and manoeuvred them a little closer to the band, where they could talk without being overheard. It was a smooth, automatic gesture; Hux filed it away.

‘She’s a civilian,’ he said by way of explanation. And then, after a brief, hurt pause at Niral’s unconcealed amusement, ‘and what’s wrong with it?’

‘Nothing at all - it’s a fine, upstanding Old Empire name, nothing more respectable for a red-blooded young Academy fellow. No, don’t pout, there’s a love. My mother named me Sarwen, so I know all about misnomers.’

‘What’s the implication of Sarwen?’ Hux asked, curiosity so easily aroused by a new snippet of intelligence. Niral’s family were from a planet that some considered almost outlandish in its provincial exoticism, a fact that did not improve Brendol Hux’s opinion of the man. Niral grimaced, as if reading Hux’s mind.

‘Delicate, bookish boys, prone to romantic episodes,’ said Niral dryly, and suddenly Hux could see him as he might have been as a youth - slender, big-eyed, softly beautiful. Niral’s preference for letting his hair go grey, which had previously seemed an incongruous choice for a vain man, now made sense. With an unbecoming and inconvenient curiosity, Hux tried to picture what Niral’s parents might be like - what alchemy of parental looks and personality might make a mother give her son a name so strangely and specifically evocative. Was his father like him? Was his mother a secret romantic?

Hux caught breath to speak, but Niral’s eyes were already wandering away across the room, tracking the movements of the other guests as they had been all evening. Abruptly they caught on someone, and Hux was close enough to him to recognise the flicker of interest that came across his face. Again - _again_ \- Hux thought, aggrieved - he had hardly had a moment with Niral the whole day and once more he was being cast aside.

‘Do excuse me,’ Niral murmured, brushing his hand absently across Hux’s chest. The back of Hux’s neck prickled with indignation.

‘I thought we were having a conversation,’ he said, low but mutinous, and Niral grimaced with distaste.

‘Don’t act out, dear boy,’ he said, biting off the ends of the words with crisp irritation. ‘I’m not just here for you, you know.’ Hux cast about for a devastatingly witty retort, but could come up with only childish complaints and so held his tongue. Niral smiled smoothly, just as if nothing had happened, and drifted across the room to a woman who had broken away from her cluster of companions.

She was tall and rigid of spine with a bosom that significantly preceded her like the prow of a ship. Her dress foamed in a spray of tiered lace, far too girlish for a woman of her years. Hux, who was already predisposed to dislike her for calling Niral away, found the ludicrous dress an excellent target for his disdain. If he passed behind her, would it be possible, he wondered, to somehow sabotage it? He envisioned with the malicious glee of a child the satisfaction of treading on the frothing train and tearing a good chunk of it off to be dirtied on the ground.

It was probably expensive, which made the daydream all the more satisfying.

Manners compelled him to stay put -- manners, and the threat of Niral’s ire. Or perhaps his disappointment, just as cutting. Regardless of cause, Hux remained in his corner, clutching his wine glass and pretending to admire the flower arrangements, some of which rippled and undulated strangely with a disconcertingly carnivorous interest in the warm bodies around them. From time to time he glanced over at Niral’s companion, watching the girlish way her aging face moved and occasionally suffering her shrill bursts of laughter.

As he watched Niral, Hux remembered the gardens that morning, and how well Niral had showed himself to advantage coming down the steps. How elegantly their meeting had played out, two men by a fountain, arriving at the same time as if by chance. Stylish happenstances seemed to happen with an unlikely regularity around Niral, who nonetheless contrived to look as though it were truly a pleasant coincidence, a convenience. Hux smiled grimly to himself. He was not surprised by Niral’s gentle manipulation, and yet it disappointed him in the same way as had finding out that folkloric figures were not in fact real when he was a child. A certain loss of illusion; a growing, or a becoming. He realised, too, that it would be the height of bad manners to mention anything, and might also spoil Niral’s rather obscure brand of fun. He did not want Niral to think of him as a naif, of course, but the results of Niral assuming innocence were so pleasing, and so he resolved to continue the charade.

 _For as long as I can get away with it,_ he thought, flushing a little with the notion of pretending to be oblivious in order to be pampered by a man near as old as his father. He finished his wine in a long swallow, and a nearby attendant swiftly relieved him of his glass and furnished him with a second, little bubbles trailing up through oyster pink wine. It was deliciously fruity and a touch sharp. By the time Niral came back to him, Hux was enlisting the wall’s aid to keep him from listing to one side; he had had no dinner. A faint smudge of cherry coloured lipstick ran along Niral’s jaw. Despite Hux’s earlier resolve, a hot wash of irritation ran through him as Niral made yet another of his apologetic pleasantries, which he almost certainly did not mean with any sincerity.

‘Was she nice?’ Hux asked, the words slipping out, slurring a little. Niral’s face froze into a rigid smile.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Your friend,’ said Hux, forging on. ‘Was she nicer than me?’

‘Her manners left very little to be desired,’ Niral said, ‘which was a pleasant departure from… this.’ He gestured brusquely to Hux, who knew he was pink with warmth and alcohol and was becoming uncomfortably aware that he had spilled a little wine on himself.

‘Is it polite to walk off and leave your date?’

‘My date?’

‘Your date.’ Hux set his jaw. Niral’s laugh was ugly and he moved in closer, boxing Hux against the wall and dropping his voice.

‘You’re drunk,’ he said firmly. ‘You are drunk, and childish, and very rude.’

‘I’m not—’

‘And you’re making a scene. This is ridiculous behaviour. I didn’t bring you here so that you could embarrass me.’

‘Why did you bring me here? It wasn’t to spend time with me.’

Niral’s mouth was a flat, tight line; Hux was navigating a dangerous star system.

‘I’m starting to question that myself, given your present attitude.’

‘So punish me.’ Hux tossed the last of his drink back, momentarily lost his balance and caught himself on a nearby column, which turned out to be a passing Cerean. ‘Sorry. Excuse me.’ He carefully set his glass on the floor, and before he had straightened all the way up, Niral had a tight grip on his wrist and was steering him towards the door, his other hand at Hux’s back as if steadying him.

They moved briskly back through the corridors, Niral utterly silent, ferocious of face, and Hux not daring to speak to him. The door to Niral’s suite hissed open as Niral verified his handprint with a rough slap, and Hux was unceremoniously marched across the room.

Niral’s hand was warm and firm on the back of Hux’s neck and he had to swallow down his fluttering excitement. The man radiated command - he always did, but tonight it was hard-edged with irritation. Until now, Niral’s attitude to Hux had been one of either amusement or interest; Hux had always been sufficiently compliant to be rewarded with Niral’s benevolence. Tonight, however, he had pushed back, he had complained. He had been _difficult_. Niral was infinitely too well-bred to make a scene of the whole thing in public, and Hux had moderated his tone so that only a very close observer would have noticed anything out of the ordinary at all. Still, Niral’s anger was rolling off him in waves. Niral’s laser focus on Hux was worryingly exciting. Hux had been half-hard since leaving the function room, in fact, a situation becoming more pressing by the minute.

Niral steered Hux into the master bedroom, carelessly waving the door closed behind them. Once Hux stumbled, and Niral did not try to catch him. Rather, he pressed Hux forward by the scruff of his neck until he had to grab at the wooden foot of the bed to keep himself on his feet. When he tried to push himself upright, he felt the weight of Niral’s hand on his lower back, right over the sharp bones of his pelvis.

‘Actually, I think that will do rather well,’ said Niral, a cruel amusement in his voice. ‘Stay there.’

Hux obeyed, braced on his forearms and bent at the waist. Niral’s footsteps scuffed away into the refresher and then returned, softer, his shoes off. They did not speak — Hux because he dared not disrupt the proceedings — and Niral gave him no warning before he put his hands on Hux’s waist and pulled him into shape, like a drill sergeant correcting a first-year’s sloppy posture.

Now that the moment had come — and Hux had, in the privacy of his own torrid imaginings, always desperately wanted it to come — it was not at all how he had pictured it. He had conjured up images of a seduction, perhaps, akin to the first time Niral had taken him out, the general guiding him through the process. Back then he had been entirely unaware of the smouldering anger at the core of Niral, that he had seen in such close quarters tonight. Treacherously, his body responded to it not with fear or trepidation, but with a sort of desperate arousal that rendered him almost mute, his extremities half-numb as the blood pounded in his throat and in his cock. He prickled all over with the heat of scrutiny, knowing that Niral was looking at him; knowing, indeed, that he had been posed specifically according to Niral’s particular tastes and was therefore not so much a participant as a toy. Hux liked that very much, liked it beyond all good sense or reason.

So much, in fact, that even through the fog of desire he was capable of realizing the truth of the evening — that he had deliberately taunted Niral. Niral’s hand on the back of his neck, his crisp commands, the slapdash way in which Hux was sprawled over the end of the bed, were all the result of Hux’s budding strategy, and he revelled in the flush of power he felt, even while Niral restrained him with one hand and stripped him with the other. The brush of fabric over his skin as his trousers were pulled down was a minor form of torture; Hux twisted involuntarily, fingers flexing in the bed sheets.

‘Stop that.’

Hux muffled his moan in the bed. Behind him, Niral’s breathing was ragged as he peeled away the last of Hux’s clothes. Naked and exposed for the second time today — on show, this time, and without the comforting fog of the steam baths or the professionalism of the women there. Where they had been gentle and delicate, treating him like a doll to groom and primp, Niral’s touch was urgent, demanding, moving him around and opening him up. Niral nudged Hux’s legs apart with his knee and then, hands greedy, ran them down his lower back and over the barely-there swell of his ass; Hux remembered the overripe way that Garene had filled out her dress, somewhat chagrined, but then only that morning Niral had looked at his thin legs and ropey biceps with something like interest, so perhaps all was not lost.

Indeed, Niral did not stop to complain. His hands, brisk and knowledgeable, parted Hux’s ass and he paused only long enough to wet his hands with something. First a light touch, slick and cold, and then the intrusive, new feeling of Niral’s thumb pushing against him and breaching him.

It was a strange feeling, or rather, it was a flurry of feelings, sensation layering on top of sensation and under it all a throbbing, building pressure. Hux stretched, opened, Niral filling him finger by finger until Hux was about to protest, to cry out that he could not take another hair. He was up on his toes, breath whining out on the exhale, pinned in place; skewered. A slick noise and an empty feeling as Niral withdrew his fingers. Then a pause, a beat, in which Hux panted and burned with a horrible kind of anticipation, before he felt the warm, blunt nudge of Niral’s cock up against him. _This is it,_ he said to himself, _this is it, don’t let me embarrass myself, don’t let me do anything — oh—_

Hux held his breath through it, waiting, waiting, letting his head grow light and his vision swim until he felt as though he was being constricted around the chest, and only then did he breathe out in a long, desperate moan, relaxing around Niral’s cock. He was — he was in, all the way in, his weight against Hux, on him, taking him. Niral moved in a slow drag, controlled. _Punish me,_ Hux had said, as if it were nothing; he had expected rough handling but this was almost worse, almost a crueller way to satisfy Hux’s demand. Niral fucked inexorably, in long strokes, with the vicious control borne of long practice.

Niral’s breath ghosted across Hux’s nape and he cried out, a high, wordless sound. He moved his hand a little on the sheets, expecting reproach, but Niral said nothing and so Hux arched his hips up until he could reach his cock. Too much — he choked out a gasp and came immediately, reflexively clenching down on Niral’s cock until it hurt. In response, Niral took a sharp breath and his rhythm faltered then picked up again.

The pressure on his back from Niral’s hand, and the pulsing aftershock of his orgasm, and the slow, constant slide of Niral’s cock into him; all these things combined into a sort of sensory white noise that pushed little gasps and squeaks out of him. Whether it was pleasurable or uncomfortable he did not know, but he did not move, did not ask Niral to stop, for the core of him cried out for this sort of treatment. He indulged himself in the illusion of having no choice. He let it happen to him. All he could do was cling to the sheets, one hand still pressed down between his legs and wet with his come.

Niral said something under his breath, spat it out, almost, and then he moaned low and deep — Hux would remember that sound, _stars_ — and he shuddered against Hux. His hands moved to Hux’s buttocks, holding him open as he withdrew. It was not hard for Hux to acquire holovids of the inappropriate kind; he had seen enough, of women and men and various xenos, to know what he must look like. Red and wet and open, and he felt the slow trickle of Niral’s spunk down his thigh, felt Niral’s thumb running around his smooth, stretched hole, committing their debauchery to memory.

It was several minutes before Niral let him up, moving away with a final caress of Hux’s hip. Running water somewhere, and Niral returned in a loose pair of pants. The air had changed somehow; gone was the oppressive heat of Niral’s anger. Upon unpeeling himself from the bed, Hux found that he ached from the awkward position, his legs jelly and his head still spinning. He held himself up against the end of the bed, shaking.

‘I have often found a bath serve well,’ said Niral, oddly neutral in tone, his anger ebbed away as he watched Hux. Exertion had brought a flush to his cheeks and he looked very well, alive and intensely beautiful. If Hux had not already had him, he would have wanted him then. All gentlemanly, Niral opened the comms panel and commanded the bath to fill, and guided Hux to it. Hux allowed himself to be steered and helped into the great white marble sweep of the tub. Warm and curled into the water, and surrounded by a soothing, herbal smell, Hux let his eyes close.

 

* * *

 

He woke up alone, sprawled across most of the bed with the sheets bundled around his naked body like a shroud. It was morning. He did not recall coming to bed. He could smell the herbal bathwater on his skin, and somehow he could still taste alcohol in his mouth; indeed, he felt a touch pickled, his head aching behind the eyes. Overnight the weather had soured, and he watched from the bed as rain lashed at the gardens, the sky a grey-green roil of clouds and the wind audibly howling even through the noise-suppressing transparisteel windows. Inside, something smelled good, like food. Hux propped himself up on his elbow to look around Niral’s suite, and found that the back of his neck was bruised and that he ached throughout, not a worse pain than the night he had arrived weary from Academy drills and the hard, upright speeder seats, but a different pain, more specific and intimate.

Little was wearable of his suit from last night — the trousers were crumpled, the tunic jacket bereft of several buttons, and the shirt was of the cobweb-fine type that had never been designed for repeated wears. He found a robe and slung it on carelessly. Niral’s wardrobe, half-open, showed his suitcase still waiting, and although breakfast had been provided for two Niral had not yet partaken, and the whole was fresh and hot. Hux wondered if its delivery had woken him. He sat and lifted one of the covers.

‘You didn’t have to wait.’ Hux jumped as Niral came in, briskly rubbing his hands together. His shoes and trouser hems were wet, suggesting an outdoor meeting. It took all of Hux’s self-control not to inquire; so much about the trip had been strange and Niral had been so absent, so obviously compelled to meet unknown parties, that Hux was tolerably sure that he would not receive a real answer. It was better not to ask, so he busied himself with the dishes, waiting.

Niral was quiet over breakfast, lounging in his chair with a datapad propped in front of him. He scrolled and read by turns, occasionally tapping out a few lines with his long fingers. Hux slid down low in his seat, messing with a little frayed thread on the right arm. If he made sufficient noise, Niral might give up his work and pay attention to him — perhaps even take him back to bed and work him over — but then there was that awful look of adult disdain on the general’s face whenever Hux _acted out_ , the look that made him so desperately ashamed of wanting to be noticed.

At length Niral brushed toast crumbs from his lap with a napkin and set aside his datapad. The full force of his attention moved to Hux, who opened to it like a flower towards the sun, despite himself.

‘Excellent work this weekend, cadet,’ Niral said, almost straight-faced, just the ghost of a smile playing around his mouth. He stroked his moustache down with finger and thumb, hiding it as quickly as it had arrived. The game of it, the play, the sport, that was what Niral liked. Accordingly, with embarrassing keenness despite Niral’s distance all weekend, Hux responded in kind.

‘Thank you, sir,’ he said, haloing himself in a cadet’s innocent obedience. He let his gaze run over Niral, just briefly, paused, for he had learned how to insinuate, and bit his lip, for effect. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’

‘Now that you mention it,’ Niral said, letting it hang in the air, and Hux — blood up, robe falling open, suddenly struck by the image of their first evening together — slid wordlessly off his chair and onto his knees.


End file.
